Happy Birthday

The CFO celebrates a special birthday today. Happy birthday!

Friday Funnies: LeDrew For Mayor

Is this some kind of joke? The ludicrously bow-tied Stephen LeDrew thinks he is going to stop David Miller?

Review: The Big Picture With Avi Lewis

On the heels of yesterday's review of The Agenda, I caught The Big Picture With Avi Lewis last night. You'll recall Avi Lewis, former Much Music VJ and Upper Canada College egalitarian, who once hosted Counterspin on CBC Newsworld. The Big Picture is just Counterspin preceded by a film that serves as the subject of a townhall discussion. The audience is larger and more liberal, but poor Avi, the intellectual runt of the Lewis litter, is no brighter. Mimicking his father's affectation, he fawns all over beauty queen Elizabeth May and berates conservative strawmen to the wild applause of his Annex audience. It begs the question of why any conservative would subject themselves to the uninformed ravings of this boob.

On a go/no-go scale, I give The Big Picture a no-go.

Review: The Agenda

TVO has overhauled its 8:00-9:00 p.m. timeslot, morphing Studio 2 into The Agenda. According to today's Globe and Mail, the intent is to delve more deeply into fewer stories because, apparently, the old format left some wanting more. I never found that to be the case and I fear, if Monday night's two-segment premiere is any indication, this will be a snooze-fest. While they've put a tie Steve Paiken, dumped Paula Todd (thank you), and replicated the Sports Centre set, there's no material difference between Studio 2 and The Agenda. Steve continues to lob intelligent, but softball, questions at guests and they're booking the same panelists (Janice Stein, Eric Margolis). I won't bother rating this on the Go/No-Go scale because, even if the show is worse, there's simply no Canadian alternative. At least I can now download it to my laptop and watch it during my Information Systems class.

MBA Rankings & Dean Martin

My apologies to semi-regular readers for "Pulling a Coyne"... will endeavour to update at least three times a week from here on.

Last week the Wall Street Journal published its ranking of MBA programs. The Ivey School of Business was rated the top Canadian business school. The Rotman School of Management at U of T finished outside the top 20 behind even York's Schulich School. As he is wont to do, Rotman Dean, Roger Martin, fired off a savage, if winded, email to his students and faculty to rebut the study. Like all surveys, this one is imperfect (Thunderbird?), but if it is as discredited as Dean Martin rants, why dignify it with 693 words?

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Stories like this one about the 61st Annual Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby make me wish I wasn't stuck in rainy London. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what it would be like to spend just one year chasing fish from Cape Breton to the Keys, bobbing in your wooden skiff, drinking alongside old salts in the wharf saloon, and competing in these tournaments if only for the stories. I think I'd even enjoy the rainy days...

Everything I Love: Lululemon

Thank you, Chip Wilson.

Review: UWO On-Campus Coffee

I have returned to the University of Western Ontario, a suspect academic institution if ever there was one, and I have come to realize how bad on-campus coffee is. Although served in Tim Horton's cups, the catering service somehow concocts a witch's brew that simultaneously tastes like black licorice and wet tobacco. Fear not, triple cream seems to fix things.

On a Go/No-Go scale, I give UWO on-campus coffee (and a number of other things around here) an emphatic: you should have gone to Queen's.

Style and Design

Men's Journal, a favourite periodical of mine, recently published its picks for 100 pieces of gear representing the best in style and design. Most of these items are well outside my frugal price range, but I was surprised to discover that I either own or have access to three of the items - the Filson briefcase, the Moleskine notebook, and a cedar strip canoe.

To their list, I think five additional knick-knacks are stylish.

1. Mounted taxidermy
2. Heavy leather chairs
3. The Tolman Skiff
4. Plaid shirts
5. Cardigan sweaters

Review: "Canada's Largest Ribfest"

When smoke hangs low over Burlington Bay on a long weekend, it's probably because the wind is blowing in from Hamilton, but on Labour Day, the haze was coming from what the Burlington Rotary Club has dubbed "Canada's Largest Ribfest". That Burlington has a claim to any "est" other than "boring-est" surprises me, but this is what they call it. Thousands of lakeshore 905ers gave up their routine Kelsey's/Milestone's/Montana's night-on-the-burb to gnaw the meat off pig bones.

Bibb's BBQ of Naples, Florida, and Bone Daddy's of Dallas, Texas, both claim, inexplicably, to have won last year's festival. Perhaps Canada's largest ribfest is not its most decisive. Bone Daddy's fall-off-the-bone meat is what you want in a spare rib, but Bibb's salty rub and finger-licking sauce combination would have taken the Silver Sow on taste. Neither, however, could top Silver Bullet BBQ of Fort Erie, Ontario, with its complete package of tender swine and candy-sweet sauce. Silver Bullet's brand of barbecue was good enough to justify another 20 minutes in line for a pulled pork sandwich, for which we asked them to ring out the sauce mop a little more. Washed down with the silver bullet beer, Silver Bullet BBQ is the Parking Lot's winner of Canada's Non-Trivial Ribfest.

Song of the Summer: Seashores of Old Mexico

With 39% of the votes cast, George Strait's remake of the Merle Haggard classic, The Seashores of Old Mexico, is the 2006 Song of the Summer. See the video.

Dirtiest Toilets - Part II

The Globe and Mail needed three PhDs, one public health nurse, and the founder of the World Toilet Organization to tell them that public washrooms are dirty. They could have just asked my mom.

Everything I Love: Saucer Fries

My obsession with a simple box of fries is well documented, but frome time to time I stumble upon a variation on this staple that is simply too good to pass on. Bubba's poutine in Kingston and baked chili cheese fries at Mullins on Bay Street come to mind. The most delicious mutation that I have found is at The Flying Saucer Restaurant in Niagara Falls, a UFO-shaped diner serving a smorgasbord of junk food under seizure-inducing red lights. Saucer Fries are a heaping dinner plate of chips bathed in the Saucer's peppery spaghetti sauce. A similar dish was served at the former Lino's of Kingston, but with the terrifying risk of food poisoning. Let the plate sit for five or ten minutes to let the sauce soak in and order Saucer Fries with nothing more than a bucket of Pepsi - you'll need all the appetite you can get.